Friday, October 31, 2008

The Obama campaign has decided to heave out three newspapers from its plane for the final days of its blitz across battleground states — and all three endorsed Sen. John McCain for president!

Remember the outrage when John McCain’s campaign kicked Maureen Dowd off of his airplane in Pennsylvania? I wonder whether the same defenders of Truth and Journalism will bother to squeak up now that Barack Obama has cleared his own plane of dissenters. Reporters from the New York Post, Washington Times, and Dallas Morning News have been declared persona non grata after their editors endorsed McCain:

The NY POST, WASHINGTON TIMES and DALLAS MORNING NEWS have all been told to move out by Sunday to make room for network bigwigs — and possibly for the inclusion of reporters from two black magazines, ESSENCE and JET, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned.

Some told the DRUDGE REPORT that the reporters are being ousted to bring on documentary film-makers to record the final days; others expect to see on board more sympathetic members of the media, including the NY TIMES’ Maureen Dowd, who once complained that she was barred from McCain’s Straight Talk Express airplane.

This seems like a strange time to upset the applecart. Why not do this a month ago? Anyone could have predicted that the Post and the Times would endorse McCain, and the Morning News was not much of a surprise, either.Had they acted a few weeks ago, they could have made it look like Team Obama wanted to give secondary media outlets a chance. Now it just looks like vindictiveness, and perhaps even worse. Obama and his supporters have gotten vicious with reporters who ask questions and do research that put Obama in a bad light, and this adds to the general pattern we’ve seen since the primaries.